retiredmartin

June 2026. Yerevan. Armenia.

Mrs RM had curated (ugh) an exhaustive, and exhausting, itinerary for our seven nights in Armenia, on the basis we probably wouldn’t be back unless Manchester City play FC Noah in a qualifier for the Conference League.

So, barely having arrived at Yerevan “Boutique” Hotel the night before and we set off with day bags to the second, much unheralded, city.

I can’t claim that rail journeys in the Balkans and the Caucases are efficient or scenic, but they are an essential part of understanding rural life. The first 3 hours trip (a steep £3, working toilet) give you an exhibition of what I assume is the art of preparing vine leaves for dolma,

which makes a pleasant change from hen parties drinking bottled vodka on the Sheffield-Liverpool express.

As we’ll see later, Armenia can be astonishingly modern, but it’s an economy driven (literally) by Yandex, the Russian Uber, and the stations seem to exist largely as an artwork.

Unable to book tickets on-line, we turn up early to find you can only buy them 50 minutes before they go, so we nip next door to the station bar.

Well, actually a garden restaurant called Sasuntsi Davit Garden,

with the local 379, a crisp wheat beer selling for an ambitious £2.40 under the arches.

I can find no evidence of Sasuntsi Davit Garden on Google, but it’s hard to miss.

I was expecting some daft prices for the food, but the Khachapuri and Khinkali seemed to be a few quid each,

calorific and gooey,

the only downside a half hour wait that had us scrambling the 50 yards to buy a ticket for the 14:25 to Gyumri.

But Armenian trains are always late, surely ?